Superstition, Luck and Vodoo

Just wondering.....I trade with some very superstitious guys. I mean really rediculous stuff. Is it me? Are they all nuts? Is it part of the makeup of traders?
Yeah, I have a few of my own....but aside from knowing my p&l will drop when I hear the sound of Bob Pisanis' voice, I think I am pretty detached from this kind of thing. Uh....maybe there is an elevator I like to avoid. But really...that's about it. My lucky shirt? Well that doesn't really count, does it?

I know some people who work with some of the "instantly recognizable" names. Don't want to mention them as I'd probably get sued for libel but for a couple, the stuff they're into is almost scary. I hardly think "voodoo" is the norm, but it's amazing to think what some people base their trading decisions on.

We all have an innate sense that there is more to life than meets the eye (insert transformers wisecrack here).
What's more real, a tabletop you can rap your knuckles on that will exist for nanoseconds in the big picture, or an intangible truth / concept / idea that will endure for eternity? What's more important, driving a nice car or passing on values and beliefs to your children and children's children?

The focus on the here and now, the material 'stuff' of the world around us, is a scam of the highest order. The dumbing down of existence, the entertainment mantra, the dominance of shallow thought, self elevation and instant gratificationâ¦.all this turns man into a dumb animals, not much more than a rutting dog if taken far enough and a stupid and cruel dog at that.

Scientists say that our brains are wired to give us natural tendency towards belief in a higher power, a transcendent reality more important than the mundane everyday. They explain away philosophy and metaphysics with this nutshell explanation. I think the scientists are hypocritical philosophy haters and the truth is actually chicken and egg: that man has a tendency to see 'something more' because there really is something more. The great atheists like Sartre had more pain and doubt in their lives than the great followers of God, because it's a much tougher row to hoe when you are trying to deny reality. It's a titanic struggle to believe that life is meaningless and we are destined to be worm food because honest observation and deep introspection flies in the face of that belief. It takes extreme pride, ego or anger to rationalize away our deepest intuitive understandings. The truth of 'something' is shouting at us. We just have to find out what it says.

What does this have to do with superstition? A good bit I think. It's generally not socially acceptable to believe in God or to ask the important questions. Because it is seen as frivolous to try and see what life is REALLY all about, most of us have learned to suppress our intuition. We are taught to be curious in many areas but when it comes to those areas of big hard universal things, we had best not explore.

Since traders are naturally contrarians and free thinking people, they tend to press the boundaries a little more. They start realizing that things aren't black and white, most stuff is not cut and dried. They start realizing that reality is messy and does not fit into a box, and that anyone walking around with total certainty is probably ignorant of many things. This natural contrarianism and curiosity makes their world more fuzzy. It moves them closer to the realm of philosophy, closer to the edge, closer to the open mind, encouraging them to peek under the veil of how things really work, if only for a moment.

But most of the time they don't take the road far enough to get to God, because they run into the barrier of 'religion,' or because they get too caught up in material stuff like Porsches and beachfront property and trophy wives. So this latent curiosity that they have stirred up, this moving closer to the edge of fuzzy reality, has to manifest itself in a subconscious way. It has to bleed out from the edges somehow.

So this is why you have hardcor, no-nonsense, number crunching traders doing things like wearing the same shirt three days in a row, being afraid if they see a penny in the urinal, etc. etc. etc. The exploring/intuitive aspects of trading open up that question door just a crack, just enough for an understanding of the hidden mystery of reality to seep in. And in its infancy, it shows up as superstition and strange beliefs.

I think most traders and investors are superstitious. They realize that they have no idea what they are doing. In a desperate attempt to improve their odds they feel they must embrace the dark recesses of their minds and give weight, perhaps gratuitous weight, to theories they can't comprehend. Why else would this group of people spend so much money on software, chat rooms, books, seminars, etc? Why else would BS like Fibonacci theory be so popular?

Originally posted by MainFramer
Actually, its worst than that. A few minutes later, we are destined to be worm poop.

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If you really believe that, your future happiness to sadness ratio is probably low, especially if past your prime. From a reward to risk standpoint, that makes the rest of your life a bad bet. So why not end it now?